A morning email from a colleague points out slippage in my conduct. A crack has opened unnecessarily in my leadership of people whose lives and wellbeing matter more than one can know.
From across the globe, words of rebuke. No pulling rank, no shooting to kill, just the words of one straight-talker to his colleague and friend. Friend and colleague.
The short, stunning shock of such a moment exceeds the capacity of words altogether to capture it. It is a stroke of loving violence, a sharpening of iron by iron better honed. The writer of proverbs has known this moment of mine:
Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,
but those who hate to be rebuked are stupid.
One can respond to the pain with defensiveness, by a well-considered litany of justifying circumstances. This moment can be escaped. There is no inevitability in its sting. It need not be prolonged until the curing poison can have its better way.
Or one can, as the proverbialist says in his rhetorical extremity, love discipline.
This is not the pleasant burn in the thighs of the sprinter, not that kind of self-imposed exertion over days, weeks, months. This is the discipline inflicted by one who for a moment stands like a savior over one who has faltered.
Can this be loved, even this, blade and all.
It can. But it doesn’t have to be loved. This trauma, if one chooses, can be momentary. It need leave no tracks.
Or one can embrace it. One can love this thing, even this.
Canter Bridge 
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